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Tuesday, 9 October 2012

It's all short: retreats and stories

My blogs have been a bit sporadic and a bit last minute for a while now as I've been distracted from my writing by setting up new one-day writing retreats. Now that I've made a trip to the Urban Writer's Retreat completely unfeasible by moving 200 miles away, I had no choice. Retreats really work for me and I need time away from home to get on and write.So starting this month, as long as I can get ongoing bookings, I will be running Retreat West so that not just mine but hopefully lots of other West Country writers' word counts can go up. To celebrate I'm giving away two free places as a prize in the competition. So if you're in my neck of the woods I hope to see you there sometime.Apart from setting this up I've also been working on some short stories for my OU module and the workshop that I'm doing with Shaun Levin. Hopefully I am learning to contain myself - time will tell. I've been reading lots of short stories in an attempt to master them myself and two that have really stood out for me have been James Joyce's The Boarding House and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Both have the same sense of dislocation about them and of trying to make sense of a world that ultimately baffles you.What about you? What short stories have you loved?

About Me

I love to read and I love to write. I write for magazines and businesses for a living, and short stories and novels for fun. When I'm not reading or writing I love to cook and to bake delicious morsels.
In an attempt to improve my writing, and my mind, I go to lots of writing workshops and events. I also run beginners fiction classes, writing retreats and a short story competition: http://www.retreatwest.co.uk/